Sooo … did anybody catch the finale of “Life on Mars U.S.” last night? Way to defile the source material, guys. Five minutes after Kate and I stopped howling at the screen, I figured out a way to make it work with two lines of dialogue: “Yeah, we used some old British cop show for your template — what’s the problem? It’s set in 2004, innit?” It wouldn’t make the ending any better, but at least it would make it credible. As usual, the Onion AV Club comment threads offer the funniest and most astute post-game analysis. Go to town.
In other news: My latest Sympatico/MSN DVD column went up at some point in the last 24 hours, but no one tells me anything. Anyway, it’s all about “Slumdog Millionaire”… though if you’re planning to buy the standard-definition DVD for its special features, you might want to hold off for the moment. (The Blu-ray edition is fine, though.)
Also out today: The latest issue of NOW, featuring my sprint through this year’s Images festival, a peek at the second Toronto Tibet Film Festival and a whack of theatrical openings to which I’ll link tomorrow. Sure, you could click around the Movies section and read them right now, but that just undermines everything I try to do here, doesn’t it? I hope you’re proud of yourselves.
Seriously, what the F was that? I was really liking the episode until… Geezus. I know all David Kelley shows eventually jump the shark and descend into awfulness, but I kind of thought maybe he wouldn’t have enough time to ruin this one. And then… Man, that was just horrendous.
What really stings is the realization that this has been his master plan all along, and that the clues for… that… had always been there from the beginning.
Yeah. It’d be so much better if we could believe the show had scrambled to find an ending and just pulled this one out of its ass, but … nope, that’s where it was going all along.
Ooooooh, it smarts.
So I learned today that David Kelley didn’t have much to do with the show after all. Apparently he left early on in its development, but retained the Executive Producer credit due to some contractual mumbo-jumbo. Regardless of who’s to blame, that was perhaps the worst series finale in the history of television.